The Virtual Aether: “Empty Space” Gets an Upgrade

The Virtual Aether –

“Empty Space” Gets an Upgrade

 

by Brendan D. Murphy

Though previously a popular scientific concept (in the form of the lumeniferous aether), the notion of an aether (ether) had essentially become taboo in science after the infamous Michelson-Morley (M-M) experiment supposedly disproved its existence in 1887, even though at best (or worst) all it did was seemingly to disprove (or rather, fail to demonstrate) the existence of an inert material or mechanical aether, hanging in the air like a gas.

The adoption of Einstein’s relativistic theories where space-time was dependent on (relative to) an observer’s speed supposedly ruled out an aetheric medium which rationally offered a single universal metric for space and for time.

Scientist and author Gregg Braden, in The Divine Matrix, has referred to the M-M experiment as “history’s greatest ‘failed’ experiment.” Independent researcher Gary Novak adds that not only did the M-M experiment fail to find an aetheric medium in space for conducting light waves, it failed to produce any result at all: “A looked-for diffraction pattern did not appear. The absence of a result is not a valid basis for conclusions in science. Any number of explanations exist for the result.” Continuing, Novak states frankly: “Failing to find the etheric medium should have meant nothing…and a recent mathematical analysis is said to show that if the curvature of the earth were taken into account, the result would have been different.”[1]

Other researchers have expressed the view that it is “totally absurd” to consider Einstein’s relativity and the M-M experiment to be a disproof of an underlying aetheric medium.[2] As independent physicist Paul LaViolette points out in Genesis of the Cosmos, the aether theory wasn’t abandoned because of experimental disproof; it just went out of style.

In contemporary particle physics, the aether has its counterpart in the zero point field (ZPF) and zero point energy—the quantum foam seething with its endless array of virtual particles bubbling momentarily into our reality and vanishing just as quick. We need to stress: The aether is not physical (like a gas), but it does produce physical effects. In fact, it is the ZPF/aether and its abundant quantum activity that creates and sustains matter itself.

Former nuclear weapons technician in the US Air Force Henry C. Warren has pointed out that the M-M experiment “was an invalid test” and explains that what Einstein’s general relativity effectively did “was to rename ether and call it space. This model preferentially uses expressions such as fabric of space or medium in space, without spelling out precisely the nature of that fabric or medium” (emphasis added). He adds that “any other model that is based on the inflow of a spatial medium or fabric…can meet all the same experimental tests that led to the acceptance of general relativity.”[3]

Indeed, Einstein had said: “Time and space and gravitation have no separate existence from matter…Physical objects are not in space, but these objects are spatially extended. In this way the concept ‘empty space’ loses its meaning…The particle can only appear as a limited region in space in which the field strength or the energy density are particularly high.”[4]

In a 1920 lecture, after his theory of general relativity was fully developed, Einstein acknowledged the necessity for aether, and did so again in his book Relativity.[5] More recently, the highly respected physicist William Tiller of “What the Bleep Do We Know!?” movie fame—also an original thinker and experimenter in consciousness research—has written that an aether is necessary when considering the subtler/occult forces and the origins of known forces and matter in general.[6]

Warren emphasises: “A vertically entrained ether theory is fully consistent with the [M-M] null results as Michelson and Lorentz of the Lorentz-FitzGerald formula firmly believed.”[7]

As the aether theory illustrates, the spatial/aetheric inflow towards the center of a celestial body creates the “pull” of gravity and the so-called “curvature” of Einstein’s relativistic “curved space,” which is merely the aetheric medium renamed. Space is not curved but Euclidian in this view. In a heated defense of the 1933 Dayton Miller aether experiments, James DeMeo asserts that in combination, the small

Michelson-Morley drift and the greater drift of the Dayton Miller experiments, which were performed at a higher altitude, actually support an entrained aether theory.[8] In 1986, the journal Nature reported on the results of experiments conducted with more sensitive equipment than what was available to Michelson and Morley. A field with the characteristics of the aether was detected, and it behaved just as the older predictions had suggested it would a century before. It was “precisely linked to the motion of the earth through space, just as had been predicted!”[9]

 

There were several theories that were proposed to explain the initial M-M null result, including Einstein’s Special Relativity. Michelson, himself a Nobel laureate, rejected the Special Relativity theory and championed the “(a)ether drag” theory, which had been proposed as early as 1831.[10] Experiments by Michelson and Gale actually supported the case for a “physical” vacuum, though fundamentalized relativistic Science prefers to ignore this.[11] Though the Priesthood of Official Science would never let on, many have criticized the theoretical removal of the aether, including Michelson himself.[12] Other researchers have attempted to correct the misconception of the apparently failed aether hypothesis through the years, with little success, due to the perceived prestige of Einstein’s entrenched theories and the assumptions carried with them.

Moreover, with the advent and establishment of Darwinism through the mid-to-late 1800s, the Western world was developing an incredible bias towards reductionist ways of viewing the universe and everything in it, and aetheric models were inevitably going to be crushed. “Scientific materialism” (an oxymoron in the context of a discussion on the origins of reality) became the dominant paradigm, and reached its zenith (or nadir, depending on your viewpoint) in the 1950s when Crick and Watson discovered the DNA helix, which the scientific world viewed as the material source of life. With Darwinism and DNA primacy in full flight, unconscious mankind could not see that the source of life actually did not lie in this electrochemical “physical” reality at all. (See The Grand Illusion – Book 1 for the undeniable proof of this notion.)

In fact, the experiments and research of Georges Sagnac (early 1900s), Herbert Ives (mid-1900s), Panagiottis Pappas (1983), Ernest Silvertooth (1987), Peter Graneau (1980s), and others (including Ampère) have rendered invalid both special relativity and general relativity, “and with [GR] goes the expanding-universe theory. Consequently the entire edifice of modern relativistic cosmology has begun to crumble.”[13] (Einstein’s GR equations demanded an expanding or contracting universe which caused him to introduce the cosmological constant notion whose purpose was to ensure astationary space-time continuum, which he believed in. The expanding/Big Bang universe idea is not compatible with today’s scientific evidence and does not afford the universe enough time to create stars and galaxies.[14])

Scientist and aether researcher David Thomson laments on his blog the nonsensical stance mainstream physics has taken towards the aether and the fabric of reality, and asks how much longer it will be before the popular PC theories essentially collapse under their own weight:

Mainstream science tells us the Aether does not exist because it is not physical. However, mainstream science talks about “electrical currents” and “twisted magnetic field lines” as though they were physical objects…[C]urrent is not a physical object of itself. Also, magnetic field lines are considered by mainstream science to be mathematical structures, not physical structures. Like the Aether, magnetic flux lines are non-material. Students of the Aether Physics Model clearly understand that magnetic flux lines are Aether structures. So the acknowledgement of the reality of magnetic flux lines is the acknowledgement of the reality of Aether! The more science learns the truth about existence, the closer they are getting to returning to the Aether theories of the past. How much more strain can mainstream science take before they are forced to recognize the Aether Physics Model?[15]

Theoretical and conceptual genius and long-time researcher Lt. Col. Tom Bearden has also lamented the peculiar psychology of mainstream research regarding the potential of tapping the aether/vacuum for infinite energy.[16] This is science in the theoretical no-man’s land of aether-lessness. Aetheric models of reality are the only viable remaining ones, and all aether theories agree that our “physical” dimension emerges from this intangible vibrating substrate.[17] The highly respected physicist Paul Dirac wrote in an article in Nature in 1951 that “[w]e must make some profound alterations to the theoretical idea of the vacuum,” and added that “with the new theory of electrodynamics we are rather forced to have an aether.”

Sixty years on, Dirac’s words are even more pertinent. Others who have devoted many years of their life to promoting the aether theory are: Maurice Allais (Nobel Prize 1988—Economics), physicist Harold Aspden, Steven Rado, Ken H. Sato, Gordon L. Ziegler, and many others. The list of anti-relativity scientists is even longer (generally scientists are anti-relativity because the verifiable formulas of relativity can be derived from classical physics and in fact many of the formulas used in relativity existed before relativity). Many scientists are both pro-aether and anti-relativity.[18] There are many experimental effects and research data that essentially necessitate an aetheric model, as noted. A very brief list of such phenomena includes:

• The Casimir effect, wherein two parallel plates held very close to each other are pushed together by the invisible “virtual” forces of the vacuum/aether/zero point field surrounding them.[19]
• The Aspden effect demonstrated that an object that has been rotated and returned to a stationary position can then be accelerated up to the same speed again using less energy than on the first go.[20]
• The DePalma effect shows that when two balls—one of them spinning rapidly and the other not—are catapulted at the same speed and angle through a vacuum, the one that is spinning willtravel higher, fall faster, and move farther overall than its non-spinning counterpart, defying all known “laws” of physics.[21] The spinning motion seems to alter the amount of time “experienced” by the ball, as well as lessening its mass, thus allowing it to travel further and fall faster than the non-spinning ball.
• Russian biophysicist S.E. Shnoll’s 30-plus years of research reveal the existence of a previously unknown relationship between fluctuations in the rates of radioactive and other processes in the laboratory, and major astronomical cycles, including the day, month, and year,[22] all of which would not be possible without a unified universal field or aether.
• Russian electrophysiologist Dr. A. Podshibyakin discovered that by charting acupuncture points, a correlation is revealed between the human “bioplasma” energy field and changes on the surface of the sun—at the exact moment solar flares occur, there are changes in the electrical potential of the skin’s acupuncture points. In some way, the bioplasma of the body is sensitive to these explosions the instant they occur, even though it takes about two days for the cosmic particles to actually reach the Earth. The only plausible mechanism for such superluminal effects is torsion/scalar waves in the aether. Podshibyakin also established a correlation between solar flares and significant increases in road accidents. Incidentally, it is cases like this that prove one of the fundamental underlying principles of astrology: everything is nonlocally interconnected.
• Most interesting from an astrological point of view is the related evidence of John H. Nelson, a radio engineer, who has discovered that magnetic disturbance in the Earth’s atmosphere (which corresponds to the incidence of solar flares) can be predicted according to the conjunctions and aspects formed by the major planets. When the planets line up in the traditionally “inharmonious” angles, magnetic disturbance is strongest; when they line up in traditionally “harmonious” angles, it is weakest.[23] For instance, Nelson found that sunspots and therefore radio disturbances occurred when two or more planets were in line, at right angles, or arranged at 180° to the sun.[24]
• Numerous predictions were made by LaViolette based on his aetheric subquantum kinetics model, which were ultimately borne out by astronomical observation—one such prediction, made in 1985, being that light is, in fact, not a constant throughout the cosmos (vindicated in 2007 by astronomers).[25] Another postulation subsequently validated by observation was that dwarf elliptical galaxies evolve into spirals and that spirals in turn gradually evolve into giant ellipticals.[26] Such predictions are not made in conventional non-aetheric cosmology. From that perspective, such findings are “anomalous.”
• Eli Cartan discovered in 1913 that the fabric (flow) of space and time in Einstein’s general theory of relativity not only “curves” but also possesses a spinning or spiraling movement within itself known as “torsion” or torsion fields. It is now generally accepted that the space surrounding the Earth and perhaps the entire galaxy has “right-handed spin,” meaning that energy is influenced to spin clockwise as it travels through the physical vacuum.[27] Everything that spins—whether a quantum or a planet—creates torsion waves in the process. See my article on torsion fields and paranormal phenomena here: www.brendandmurphy.net/apps/blog/
• The work of Russian scientist Dr. Nikolai A. Kozyrev (1908–83) showed that by shaking, spinning, heating, cooling, vibrating, impacting, or breaking physical objects, their weight can be increased or decreased by subtle but definite amounts. An object temporarily caused to lose mass in such a way has it return “from out of nowhere” in a “quantized” manner (in discontinuous jumps), rather than gradually in a smooth line.[28]
• In the 1990s, Evgeny Podkletnov engineered a ceramic donut-shaped superconductor ring that shielded gravity by 2–5% in objects placed over it as it spun at 5,000 RPMs. A funnel of gravity 30 centimeters above and below the device was also identified.[29]

Kozyrev proved decades ago that torsion fields travel at superluminal speeds. Such a superluminal energy, separate from gravity and electromagnetism (and even more fundamental), represents a significant breakthrough in physics—one that demands that a zero-point energy or an aether must really exist.[30]

Torsion fields that travel far beyond light speed do so in reference frames we can refer to ashyperspace; the aether and its different density levels/dimensions are hyperspace itself. The flow of energy and information between “parallel” dimensions/virtual realities is reciprocal: our reality can influence hyperspace and vice-versa. With this conception we have moved far beyond the idea of aether as a gas-like substance lingering in the air and into concepts that once belonged to science fiction.

Bearden can speak with some authority on the subject. He observes: “Every fundamental constant of nature is dynamically constructed from—and due to—the zero-point, virtual vacuum interactions that constitute “empty” space. The virtual “sea” of seething waves and particles that is empty vacuum is actually an ether — a Lorentz-invariant, nonmaterial (virtual) ether, perfectly admissible by the Michelson-Morley experiment and the entire experimental basis of physics. Indeed, Einstein once proposed naming the vacuum and its contained fields the “ether,” but his suggestion was not heeded.”[31]

“The message is”, in the pioneering Harold Aspden’s words, “[a]ccept the aether is real and has structure and you can understand how matter is created—but ignore the aether and you live in ignorance!”[32]

In mainstream physics there is the concept of the “Higgs Ocean,” named after Scottish physicist Peter Higgs who conceived the idea of the Higgs Ocean and its particulate force-carrier — the Higgs boson — in 1964 while out taking a walk in the countryside. Like the aether, the Higgs Ocean/Field is described as an all-pervading fluid-like field composed of Higgs particles which creates and maintains the physical universe and accounts for the phenomenon of inertia. A scalar field (having magnitude but no direction), it possesses a non-zero energy value, accounts for the mass of particles, and is required to keep the Standard Model mathematically consistent.[33]

In mid-2012—and with much fanfare—the Higgs boson was said to have been discovered with a high degree of certainty (it was born out of the chaos resulting from protons being smashed together at high speeds in the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland). In Higgs’ model it is the specific subatomic particle responsible for providing matter with its mass, and its momentous (not quite certain) discovery means that physicists do not have to scrap the standard model altogether.[34] The discovery of the Higgs boson further indirectly supports the case for a fluid-like “aetheric” source of creation, or “Higgs Field.” Particles have to come from somewhere, after all.

In TGI 1 (and 2) I show the reader that the aetheric medium and its torsion/scalar fields are the key to life itself, and the foundation and sine qua non of a science of consciousness. Science of the 21^st and 22^nd centuries will increasingly become aether/consciousness science (or perhaps “conscious aether science”!), as physicists gradually acknowledge that the creative medium of our universe which spawned all known forces, subatomic particles, and minds is innately conscious. This is, of course, axiomatic for any serious student of the nature of consciousness and/or reality.

References:

[1] Gary Novak, Relativity, https://gnovak47.wordpress.com/rela/
[2] See R.W. Kehr, The Study of Ether, Ch. 1.
[3] H. C. Warren, The Entrained Spatial Medium Gravitational Sink Model.www.olypen.com/hcwarren/SpatialFlow.pdf
[4] www.spaceandmotion.com.
[5] Warren, Op. cit.
[6] See W. Tiller, Psychoenergetic Science.
[7] Warren, Op. Cit.
[8] Ibid.
[9] G. Braden, The Divine Matrix, 19–21.
[10] Kehr, Op. Cit., 8.
[11] D. G. Yurth, Seeing Past the Edge, 140.
[12] Further reading on Michelson-Morley and aether: www.esotericscience.com/Aether.aspx, www.olypen.com/hcwarren and www.orgonelab.org/miller.htm.
[13] P. LaViolette, Genesis of the Cosmos, 270–2.
[14] Ibid., Ch. 13.
[15] D. Thomson, Aether in Space is Fluid. http://softaether.blogspot.com/2009/05/aether-in-space-is-fluid.html
[16] Lt. Col. T. Bearden, Energy Density of the Vacuum.www.cheniere.org/references/energydensityofvacuum.htm
[17] D. Wilcock, The Science of Oneness, Ch. 2.
[18] See Kehr, Op. Cit., Ch. 1.
[19] See B. D. Murphy, The Grand Illusion: A Synthesis of Science and Spirituality – Book 1.
[20] H. Aspden, Discovery of Virtual Inertia. See also Wilcock’s ‘Convergence’ series.
[21] See Wilcock, The Science of Oneness, Ch. 4.12 and Divine Cosmos, Ch. 1.12. See also www.rexresearch.com/depalma/depalma.htm.
[22] J. Tennenbaum, Russian Discovery Challenges Existence of Absolute Time. www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/time.html.
[23] Astrology. www.astro121.com/astrology.htm.
[24] L. Watson, Supernature, 38.
[25] P. LaViolette, Subquantum Kinetics. See also Yurth, Seeing Past the Edge, for more on the speed of light as a constant idea.
[26] Ibid., 94.
[27] See D. Wilcock, The Aether Science of Dr. N.A. Kozyrev, Nexus, 14(3).
[28] Ibid. See also Wilcock’s “Convergence” series, in particular The Divine Cosmos, Ch. 1, for how Kozyrev identified torsion forces. Wilcock’s The Source Field Investigations (Dutton, 2011) discusses these experiments at length. Torsion is discussed in relation to psychic phenomena at length in my book The Grand Illusion: A Synthesis of Science and Spirituality.
[29] M. D. Jones, PSIence, 169.
[30] D. Wilcock, Nexus, Op. Cit.
[31] Lt. Col. T. Bearden, Excalibur Briefing, 258–61.
[32] H. Aspden, Physics Without Einstein, 33.
[33] See L. Susskind, The Cosmic Landscape; see also Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos.
[34] R. Waugh & F. Macrae, Higgs boson found, www.dailymail.co.uk.

About the Author

 

Brendan D. Murphy – Co-founder of Global Freedom Movement and host of GFM Radio, BrendanD. Murphy is a leading Australian author, researcher, activist, and musician. His acclaimed non-fiction epic The Grand Illusion: A Synthesis of Science & Spirituality – Book 1 is out now! Come and get your mind blown at www.brendandmurphy.net
Please visit – www.globalfreedommovement.org

This article © Brendan D. Murphy.

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What is the Speed of Gravity? Much Faster Than Light

What is the Speed of Gravity?

Much Faster Than Light - Rethinking Relativity

by Tom Bethell

No one has paid attention, but a well-respected physics journal published an article whose conclusion, if generally accepted, will undermine the foundations of modern physics- - Einstein's theory of relativity in particular.

Published in Physics Letters A (December 21, 1998), the article claims that the speed with which the force of gravity propagates must be at least twenty billion times faster than the speed of light. This would contradict the special theory of relativity of 1905, which asserts that nothing can go faster than light. This claim about the special status of the speed of light has become part of the world view of educated.

Special relativity, as opposed to the general theory (1916), is considered by experts to be above criticism, because it has been confirmed "over and over again." But several dissident physicists believe that there is a simpler way of looking at the facts, a way that avoids the mind-bending complications of relativity. Their arguments can be understood by laymen. I wrote about one of these dissidents, Petr Beckmann (TAS, August 1993, and Correspondence, TAS, October 1993). The present article introduces new people and arguments. The subject is important because if special relativity is supplanted, much of twentieth-century physics, including quantum theory, will have to be reconsidered in that light.

The article in Physics Letters A was written by Tom Van Flandern, a research associate in the physics department at the University of Maryland. He also publishes Meta Research Bulletin, which supports "promising but unpopular alternative ideas in astronomy." In the 1990s he worked as a special consultant to the Global Positioning System (GPS), a set of satellites whose atomic clocks allow ground observers to determine their position to within about a foot.


Van Flandern reports that an intriguing controversy arose before GPS was even launched. Special relativity gave Einsteinians reason to doubt whether it would work at all. In fact, it works fine. (But more on that later.)

The publication of his article is a breakthrough of sorts. For years, most editors of mainstream physics journals have automatically rejected articles arguing against special relativity. This policy was informally adopted in the wake of the Herbert Dingle controversy. A professor of science at the University of London, Dingle had written a book popularizing special relativity, but by the 1960's he had become convinced that it couldn't be true. So he wrote another book, Science at the Crossroads (1972), contradicting the first. Scientific journals, especially Nature, were bombarded with his (and others') letters.

An editor of Physics Letters A promised Van Flandern that reviewers would not be allowed to reject his article simply because it conflicted with received wisdom. Van Flandern begins with the "most amazing thing" he learned as a graduate student of celestial mechanics at Yale: that all gravitational interactions must be taken as instantaneous. At the same time, students were also taught that Einstein's special relativity proved that nothing could propagate faster than light in a vacuum. The disagreement "sat there like an irritant," Van Flandern told me. He determined that one day he would find its resolution. Today, he thinks that a new interpretation of relativity may be needed.

The argument that gravity must travel faster than light goes like this. If its speed limit is that of light, there must be an appreciable delay in its action. By the time the Sun's "pull" reaches us, the Earth will have "moved on" for another 8.3 minutes (the time of light travel). But by then the Sun's pull on the Earth will not be in the same straight line as the Earth's pull on the Sun. The effect of these misaligned forces "would be to double the Earth's distance from the Sun in 1,200 years." Obviously, this is not happening. The stability of planetary orbits tells us that gravity must propagate much faster than light. Accepting this reasoning, Isaac Newton assumed that the force of gravity must be instantaneous.

Astronomical data support this conclusion. We know, for example, that the Earth accelerates toward a point 20 arc-seconds in front of the visible Sun -- that is, toward the true, instantaneous direction of the Sun. Its light comes to us from one direction, its "pull" from a slightly different direction. This implies different propagation speeds for light and gravity.

It might seem strange that something so fundamental to our understanding of physics can still be a matter of debate. But that in itself should encourage us to wonder how much we really know about the physical world. In certain Internet discussion groups, "the most frequently asked question and debated topic is 'What is the speed of gravity?'" Van Flandern writes. It is heard less often in the classroom, but only "because many teachers and most textbooks head off the question." They understand the argument that it must go very fast indeed, but they also have been trained not to let anything exceed Einstein's speed limit.

So maybe there is something wrong with special relativity after all.

In The ABC of Relativity (1925), Bertrand Russell said that just as the Copernican system once seemed impossible and now seems obvious, so, one day, Einstein's relativity theory "will seem easy." But it remains as "difficult" as ever, not because the math is easy or difficult (special relativity requires only high-school math, general relativity really is difficult), but because elementary logic must be abandoned. ‘Easy Einstein’ books remain baffling to almost all. The Sun-centered solar system, on the other hand, has all along been easy to grasp. Nonetheless, special relativity (which deals with motion in a straight line) is thought to be beyond reproach.

General relativity (which deals with gravity, and accelerated motion in general) is not regarded with the same awe. Stanford's Francis Everitt, the director of an experimental test of general relativity due for space-launch as this is written, has summarized the standing of the two theories in this way: "I would not be at all surprised if Einstein's general theory of relativity were to break down," he wrote. "Einstein himself recognized some serious shortcomings in it, and we know on general grounds that it is very difficult to reconcile with other parts of modern physics. With regard to special relativity, on the other hand, I would be much more surprised. The experimental foundations do seem to be much more compelling." This is the consensus view.

Dissent from special relativity is small and scattered. But it is there, and it is growing. Van Flandern's article is only the latest manifestation. In 1987, Petr Beckmann, who taught at the University of Colorado, published Einstein Plus Two, pointing out that the observations that led to relativity can be more simply reinterpreted in a way that preserves universal time. The journal he founded, Galilean Electrodynamics, was taken over by Howard Hayden of the University of Connecticut (Physics), and is now edited by Cynthia Kolb Whitney of the Electro-Optics Technology Center at Tufts. Hayden held colloquia on Beckmann's ideas at several New England universities, but could find no physicist who even tried to put up an argument.

A brief note on Einstein's most famous contribution to physics -- the formula that everyone knows. When they hear that heresy is in the air, some people come to the defense of relativity with this question: "Atom bombs work, don't they?" They reason as follows: The equation E = mc2 was discovered as a byproduct of Einstein's (special) theory of relativity (True). Relativity, they conclude, is indispensable to our understanding of the way the world works. But that does not follow. Alternative derivations of the famous equation dispense with relativity. One such was provided by Einstein himself in 1946. And it is simpler than the relativistic rigmarole. But few Einstein books or biographies mention the alternative. They admire complexity, and cling to it.

Consider Clifford M. Will of Washington University, a leading proponent of relativity today. "It is difficult to imagine life without special relativity," he says in Was Einstein Right?  "Just think of all the phenomena or features of our world in which special relativity plays a role. Atomic energy, both the explosive and the controlled kind. The famous equation E=mc2 tells how mass can be converted into extraordinary amounts of energy." Note the misleading predicate, "plays a role." He knows that the stronger claim, "is indispensable," would be pounced on as inaccurate.

Is there an alternative way of looking at all the facts that supposedly would be orphaned without relativity? Is there a simpler way? A criterion of simplicity has frequently been used as a court of appeal in deciding between theories. If it is made complex enough, the Ptolemaic system can predict planetary positions correctly. But the Sun-centered system is much simpler, and ultimately we prefer it for that reason.

Tom Van Flandern says the problem is that the Einstein experts who have grown accustomed to "Minkowski diagrams and real relativistic thinking" find the alternative of universal time and "Galilean space" actually more puzzling than their own mathematical ingenuities. Once relativists have been thoroughly trained, he says, it's as difficult for them to rethink the subject in classical terms as it is for laymen to grasp time dilation and space contraction. For laymen, however, and for those physicists who have not specialized in relativity, which is to say the vast majority of physicists, there's no doubt that the Galilean way is far simpler than the Einsteinian.

Special relativity was first proposed as a way of sidestepping the great difficulty that arose in physics as a result of the Michelson-Morley experiment (1887). Clerk Maxwell had shown that light and radio waves share the same electromagnetic spectrum, differing only in wave length. Sea waves require water, sound waves air, so, it was argued, electromagnetic waves must have their own medium to travel in. It was called the ether. "There can be no doubt that the interplanetary and interstellar spaces are not empty," Maxwell wrote, "but are occupied by a material substance or body, which is certainly the largest, and probably the most uniform body of which we have any knowledge." As today's dissidents see things, it was Maxwell's assumption of uniformity that was misleading.

The experiment of Michelson and Morley tried to detect this ether. Since the Earth in its orbital motion must plow through it, an "ether wind" should be detectable, just as a breeze can be felt outside the window of a moving car. Despite repeated attempts, however, no ethereal breeze could be felt. A pattern of interference fringes was supposed to shift when Michelson's instrument was rotated. But there was no fringe shift.

Einstein explained this result in radical fashion. There is no need of an ether, he said. And there was no fringe shift because the speed of an approaching light wave is unaffected by the observer's motion. But if the speed of light always remains the same, time itself would have to slow down, and space contract to just the amount needed to ensure that the one divided by the other -- space divided by time  --always gave the same value: the unvarying speed of light. The formula that achieved this result was quite simple, and mathematically everything worked out nicely and agreed with observation.


The skeptical, meanwhile, were placated with this formula: "I know it seems odd that time slows down and space contracts when things move, but don't worry, a measurable effect only occurs at high velocities -- much higher than anything we find in everyday life. So for all practical purposes we can go on thinking in the same old way." (Meanwhile, space and time have been subordinated to velocity. Get used to it.)

Now we come to some modern experimental findings. Today we have very accurate clocks, accurate to a billionth of a second a day. The tiny differentials predicted by Einstein are now measurable. And the interesting thing is this: Experiments have shown that atomic clocks really do slow down when they move, and atomic particles really do live longer. Does this mean that time itself slows down? Or is there a simpler explanation?

The dissident physicists I have mentioned disagree about various things, but they are beginning to unite behind this proposition: There really is an ether, in which electromagnetic waves travel, but it is not the all-encompassing, uniform ether proposed by Maxwell. Instead, it corresponds to the gravitational field that all celestial bodies carry about with them. Close to the surface (of Sun, planet, or star) the field, or ether, is relatively more dense. As you move out into space it becomes more attenuated. Beckmann's Einstein Plus Two introduces this hypothesis, I believe for the first time, and he told me it was first suggested to him in the 1950's by one of his graduate students, Jiri Pokorny, at the Institute of Radio Engineering and Electronics in Prague. Pokorny later joined the department of physics at Prague's Charles University, and today is retired.

I believe that all the facts that seem to require special or general relativity can be more simply explained by assuming an ether that corresponds to the local gravitational field. Michelson found no "ether wind," or fringe shift, because of course the Earth's gravitational field moves forward with the Earth. As for the bending of starlight near the Sun, the confirmation of general relativity that made Einstein world-famous, it is easily explained given a non-uniform light medium. It is a well known law of physics that wave fronts do change direction when they enter a denser medium. According to Howard Hayden, refracted starlight can be derived this way "with a few lines of high school algebra." And derived exactly.

The tensor calculus and Riemannian geometry of general relativity gives only an approximation. Likewise the "Shapiro Time-Delay," observed when radar beams pass close to the Sun and bounce back from Mercury. Some may prefer to try to understand all this in terms of the "curvature of space-time," to use the Einstein formulation (unintelligible to laymen, I believe). But they should know that a far simpler alternative exists.

The advance of the perihelion of Mercury's orbit, another famous confirmation of general relativity, is worth a closer look. (The perihelion is the point in the orbit closest to a sun.) Graduate theses may one day be written about this peculiar episode in the history of science. In his book, Subtle Is the Lord, Abraham Pais reports that when Einstein saw that his calculations agreed with Mercury's orbit, "he had the feeling that something actually snapped in him... This experience was, I believe, by far the strongest emotional experience in Einstein's scientific life, perhaps in all his life. Nature had spoken to him."

Fact: The equation that accounted for Mercury's orbit had been published 17 years earlier, before relativity was invented. The author, Paul Gerber, used the assumption that gravity is not instantaneous, but propagates with the speed of light. After Einstein published his general-relativity derivation, arriving at the same equation, Gerber's article was reprinted in *Annalen der Physik* (the journal that had published Einstein's relativity papers). The editors felt that Einstein should have acknowledged Gerber's priority. Although Einstein said he had been in the dark, it was pointed out that Gerber's formula had been published in Mach's Science of Mechanics, a book that Einstein was known to have studied. So how did they both arrive at the same formula?

Tom Van Flandern was convinced that Gerber's assumption (gravity propagates with the speed of light) was wrong. So he studied the question. He points out that the formula in question is well known in celestial mechanics. Consequently, it could be used as a "target" for calculations that were intended to arrive at it. He saw that Gerber's method "made no sense, in terms of the principles of celestial mechanics." Einstein had also said (in a 1920 newspaper article) that Gerber's derivation was "wrong through and through."

So how did Einstein get the same formula? Van Flandern went through his calculations, and found to his amazement that they had "three separate contributions to the perihelion; two of which add, and one of which cancels part of the other two; and you wind up with just the right multiplier." So he asked a colleague at the University of Maryland, who as a young man had overlapped with Einstein at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study, how in his opinion Einstein had arrived at the correct multiplier. This man said it was his impression that, "knowing the answer," Einstein had "jiggered the arguments until they came out with the right value."

If the general relativity method is correct, it ought to apply everywhere, not just in the solar system. But Van Flandern points to a conflict outside it: binary stars with highly unequal masses. Their orbits behave in ways that the Einstein formula did not predict. "Physicists know about it and shrug their shoulders," Van Flandern says. They say there must be "something peculiar about these stars, such as an oblateness, or tidal effects." Another possibility is that Einstein saw to it that he got the result needed to "explain" Mercury's orbit, but that it doesn't apply elsewhere.

The simplest way to understand all this "without going crazy," Van Flandern says, is to discard Einsteinian relativity and to assume that "there is a light-carrying medium." When a clock moves through this medium "it takes longer for each electron in the atomic clock to complete its orbit." Therefore it makes fewer "ticks" in a given time than a stationary clock. Moving clocks slow down, in short, because they are "ploughing through this medium and working more slowly." It's not time that slows down. It's the clocks. All the experiments that supposedly "confirm" special relativity do so because all have been conducted in laboratories on the Earth's surface, where every single moving particle, or moving atomic clock, is in fact "ploughing through" the Earth's gravitational field, and therefore slowing down.

Both theories, Einsteinian and local field, would yield the same results. So far. Now let's turn back to the Global Positioning System. At high altitude, where the GPS clocks orbit the Earth, it is known that the clocks run roughly 46,000 nanoseconds (one-billionth of a second) a day faster than at ground level, because the gravitational field is thinner 20,000 kilometers above the Earth. The orbiting clocks also pass through that field at a rate of three kilometers per second -- their orbital speed. For that reason, they tick 7,000 nanoseconds a day slower than stationary clocks.

To offset these two effects, the GPS engineers reset the clock rates, slowing them down before launch by 39,000 nanoseconds a day. They then proceed to tick in orbit at the same rate as ground clocks, and the system "works." Ground observers can indeed pin-point their position to a high degree of precision.

In (Einstein) theory, however, it was expected that because the orbiting clocks all move rapidly and with varying speeds relative to any ground observer (who may be anywhere on the Earth's surface), and since in Einstein's theory the relevant speed is always speed relative to the observer, it was expected that continuously varying relativistic corrections would have to be made to clock rates. This in turn would have introduced an unworkable complexity into the GPS. But these corrections were not made.

Yet "the system manages to work, even though they use no relativistic corrections after launch," Van Flandern said. "They have basically blown off Einstein."

The latest findings are not in agreement with relativistic expectations. To accommodate these findings, Einsteinians are proving adept at arguing that if you look at things from a different "reference frame," everything still works out fine. But they have to do the equivalent of standing on their heads, and it's not convincing. A simpler theory that accounts for all the facts will sooner or later supplant one that looks increasingly Rube Goldberg-like. I believe that is now beginning to happen.

Dingle's Question:

University of London Professor Herbert Dingle showed why special relativity will always conflict with logic, no matter when we first learn it. According to the theory, if two observers are equipped with clocks, and one moves in relation to the other, the moving clock runs slower than the non-moving clock. But the relativity principle itself (an integral part of the theory) makes the claim that if one thing is moving in a straight line in relation to another, either one is entitled to be regarded as moving. It follows that if there are two clocks, A and B, and one of them is moved, clock A runs slower than B, and clock B runs slower than A. Which is absurd.

Dingle's Question was this: Which clock runs slow? Physicists could not agree on an answer. As the debate raged on, a Canadian physicist wrote to Nature in July 1973: "Maybe the time has come for all of those who want to answer to get together and to come up with one official answer. Otherwise the plain man, when he hears of this matter, may exercise his right to remark that when the experts disagree they cannot all be right, but they can all be wrong."

The problem has not gone away. Alan Lightman of MIT offers an unsatisfactory solution in his Great Ideas in Physics (1992). "[T]he fact that each observer sees the other clock ticking more slowly than his own clock does not lead to a contradiction. A contradiction could arise only if the two clocks could be put back together side by side at two different times." But clocks in constant relative motion in a straight line "can be brought together only once, at the moment they pass." So the theory is protected from its own internal logic by the impossibility of putting it to a test. Can such a theory be said to be scientific? --TB

Tom Van Flandern's Meta Research Bulletinand his book, Dark Matter, Missing Planets may be obtained from P.O. Box 15186, Chevy Chase, MD 20825; Petr Beckmann's Einstein Plus Two from Golem Press, P.O. Box 1342, Boulder, CO 80306. Beckmann's book is highly technical; Van Flandern's is mostly accessible to laymen. Tom Bethell is TAS's Washington correspondent. His new book, The Noblest Triumph, was recently published by St. Martin's Press. (Posted 4/28/99 from The American Spectator, April 1999).

Via http://www.n-atlantis.com/vanflandern.htm 

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